Building the Broadband Economy from the Bottom Up: A Community Informatics Approach to BB and Economic Development - telecentre.org

High speed Internet at relatively affordable prices is rapidly becoming available in large parts of both the developed and developing worlds. This means that the technical restrictions on high volume information access and transaction management, very high speed communications at a distance, and a highly expanded range of Internet and information management capabilities are rapidly disappearing. The challenge remains however, as to how those at the grassroots and particularly in developing countries can take advantage of these developments to improve their level of economic well-being, access to employment and to the realization of additional opportunities for themselves and their children. The risk is that high speed Internet will result in more drain from local economies into more highly developed and capital intensive applications and their centralized and corporate sponsors rather than a move of resources and development in the other direction. The challenge is to examine these broadband initiatives, explore the risks and identify the opportunities associated with these and identify means for realizing opportunities at the grassroots for broadband use through the development of bottom-up community based – community informatics – strategies and applications."